The Gulf financial markets achieved net foreign inflows of $ 2.21 billion during the first quarter of this year.
It is supported by the Saudi market, to which foreign funds flowed recordly this year, after several reforms including the stock market, which is reflecting the international interest in the local market.
According to an analysis of the unit of reports in the newspaper "Al-Eqtisadiah"-based on the data of the Arab Monetary Fund-, the net foreign inflow in the Saudi market was 16 times more than the rest of the Gulf countries combined during the first three months of this year.
Saudi Arabia accounted for $ 2.08 billion of net foreign inflows, with $ 2.211 billion, while foreign investment in the rest of the Gulf markets was $ 131.4 million.
The foreign investment in the Saudi market, which includes swap agreements and foreign residents and Arabs, achieved a total purchase of SR 23.98 billion ($ 6.39 billion) during the first three months of this year, while net purchases during the same period reached 16.18 billion riyals ($ 4.31 billion), with a net investment of SR 7.8 billion (equivalent to $ 2.08 billion).
The Capital Market Authority (CMA) has amended the investment rules for qualified foreign financial institutions in the Saudi stock market twice in about two years, while finally making amendments to foreign investment rules.
The main changes in the current rules include facilitating and speeding up the qualification process by eliminating the requirement for the CMA to review and register the qualified foreign investor.
It also allowed the qualification of the financial institutions of the qualified foreign investor or the manager of the foreign portfolio and the funds managed by them without the need to submit separate applications and to mitigate some of the requirements of the continuing commitment to the qualified foreign investor.
Qualified foreign financial institutions reached 118 financial institutions by the end of 2017.
The Gulf financial markets-except for the Saudi market-recorded a net foreign investment of about 131.38 million dollars during the first quarter of this year.
Three markets achieved positive investment inflows, while two markets achieved net inflows of negative foreign investment.
The UAE market recorded a positive foreign inflow of 78.5 million riyals, while the Kuwaiti market achieved a positive flow of 36.9 million riyals and the market of Qatar at 67.7 million dollars.
While the Bahraini stock market achieved a net sale of about 10.6 million dollars, as well as net sale of the Omani stock market about 50.2 million dollars.
